


You Are My Sunshine

by SoulRecall



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Early CyberLife, F/M, Graphic Depictions of Programming, Light Angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Young Kamski
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-10 03:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15940874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulRecall/pseuds/SoulRecall
Summary: Moments where Chloe was Elijah's sunshine, and moments where she realised he was hers.





	1. You are my sunshine

He really ought to have gone to bed hours ago. He had a lecture in the morning.

 

Tired eyes peered up at the display of his clock, blinking _2:46 am_ in harsh blue light. The numbers mocked him. They told him that he hadn’t moved from the cold, wooden floor of his dorm room since he got back. Told him that he hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Told him it was time for him to get some much-needed rest. Yet, he did not heed.

 

His weary hands tapped away at the keys of his laptop, desperate to reach a stage in his project that he deemed suitable to leave for the night.

 

“I’ll just finish this subroutine.”

 

“I’ll just finish this module.”

 

“I suppose I should finish this loop.”

 

This little game had been going on for hours now, growing tired, yet still headstrong. He knew he would be a wreck when he woke up if he even went to sleep. Hours spent hunched over, with a computer as his only source of light, was not exactly a positive for a boy of fifteen. He already had appalling posture, and this would certainly be of further detriment.

 

Professor Stern, _Amanda_ , would chide him in the morning, he was sure of that. She was always so cognisant of the dark circles beneath his thick-framed glasses, asking him why he hadn’t been resting. She would explain to him the importance of sleep for the brain, explain that he needed to form a proper routine if he were to do well in his studies. He felt as if he was speaking to his mother on those days.

 

He took off his glasses to rub at his face, his eyes dry and overexerted from the time spent staring at the screen. He didn’t have the best eyesight to begin with, and staring at a laptop for this long was hardly going to help. He simply didn’t want to stop working on his task.

 

 _His task._ The program that had been the centre of his attention for months now.

 

An artificial intelligence; a friend, if you will, free from the faults of a human companion. A program that could speak to a user about any topic, sourcing the internet for information to keep them entertained for hours. Software that had the ability to take on the personality of a human, to keep someone company at any time of the day. A foolish dream that he had attempted to make a reality through his extensive study of AI at Colbridge University.

 

The boy was always incredibly bright. Graduating from the high school curriculum at the tender age of thirteen, knowledge rivalling that of his tutors. He had gotten under the skin of a few when he corrected them on subjects they had dedicated their entire lives to. He had never been one to keep his mouth shut; quick wit and sharp intelligence maddening to those around him. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t have many friends.

 

He told himself that he didn’t mind his lack of companions. It kept him focused on what was important, and not the foolish, hormone-fuelled activities of his peers. He had seen what his brother had spent his nights doing, sneaking out of the house late at night to rendezvous with school friends, stealing sips of alcohol taken from parents kitchens, having his first kisses. He had no time for it. He was above such petty ventures; his study and his projects taking first priority.

 

His artificial intelligence took most of his free time ( _Chloe,_ he called her, as if the software truly were a living thing), spending whatever he could in the afternoons after his lectures tucked away in a quiet corner of the library or his dormitory manipulating her code. He was obsessed with her; always looking to improve her whether it be making her faux personality appear more lifelike, or making her more intelligent and self-sufficient.

 

While the rational part of him told him this was merely the foolish dream of a boy and not his reality, he couldn’t help but smile at the possibility of giving her a body. He wanted to make her completely indiscernible from a human to the untrained eye, soft skin and friendly eyes to entice the user into speaking with her. He knew that he didn’t have the funds or enough resources to build himself an  _android._ For now, he knew he had to be content with the simple program. She didn’t even have a voice yet. She was merely words on a screen.

 

He hadn’t realised his eyes had closed in his reverie. Quickly opening them to go back to his algorithm, he discovered he was growing too weary to comprehend his own code. Curse his weaknesses as a human. Sometimes he figured being a machine would be easier. Against his wishes, he saved his progress and closed down his computer. He needed to maintain at least some semblance of consciousness at his lecture tomorrow.

 

Legs unsteady as if he were a newborn foal, he padded to his bathroom. It was nothing spectacular; simply the facilities he would need day-to-day, but he found it relieving that he didn’t have to share it. It was one of the perks of attending a more sophisticated university. He treated himself to a warm shower, hoping to loosen the joints that had been cemented into place from sitting in the same position for so long and hopefully make him feel more alive. He relished the feeling of the warm water on his pallid skin, basking in it as if it were a once in a lifetime experience.

 

After a few divine minutes, he retired to the comfort of sweatpants and his Colbridge University hoodie (a gift he had received from his parents after accepting his scholarship offer; probably one of the more positive memories he had of his home life). It was the most comfortable item of clothing he had, as it was slightly too large on his lithe form. He supposed he would grow into it with time; he was still young after all.

 

As he climbed into bed, he looked over at his laptop, now sitting charging on his desk. He pondered the true power of it. If he truly were able to create an advanced artificial intelligence, as per his goal, that small machine would be holding an entire _life_. Perhaps he shouldn’t deem Chloe alive, but it felt strangely fitting in his heart.

 

He took off his glasses and let his eyes fall closed. He spoke quietly.

 

“Goodnight, Chloe."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: wow i cant wait to put out serious star wars fanfiction now that im writing again  
> my gremlin brain: write about manbun boi and his android gf  
> me: why  
> my gremlin brain: ya gotta


	2. My only sunshine

_Now, why was she doing that?_

 

He groaned as he scanned over the newly implemented code, hoping to find the source of Chloe’s _newest_ bug He could have sworn his new protocols were bulletproof; free from any runtime errors and enabling Chloe able to communicate with the user effectively. Yet, when he tried to speak with her about what he deemed was a _simple_ topic, she was rendered mute, as if she was stunned into silence by the gravity of the words.

 

“Don’t you malfunction on me. I need you operational.”

 

He read over the sections that could have possibly caused her to crash, assuming that it was either a problem in her speech inhibiting her from giving an answer, or a glitch in the subroutine that gathered new information. He was slightly panicked as he scrolled through the endless river of work, looking desperately for the source to patch the anomaly.

 

Chloe was no longer just his pet project. After graduating from Colbridge a few years prior, he had sought to develop her full-time. His boyish dream of creating a true artificial intelligence, _a machine to pass the Turing test_ , was quickly becoming a possibility as his innate talent for coding was becoming more and more apparent.

 

He could have a fully fledged android, if her software actually behaved _as it was supposed to._

 

He had pooled his meagre savings together; money he had managed to earn from summer jobs, birthdays and Christmases, all in the hopes of bringing his goals into reality. He had placed what little he had on his belief in his creation; knowing that Chloe, and subsequent artificial personalities, had the ability to make a difference. They could serve as assistants, carers, helping people with their day-to-day lives by providing them with information or skills only they were able to possess. And he believed that only  _he_ was capable of being the architect of that future. Here, alone in his derelict office space, hidden from the world on the outskirts of Detroit.

 

However, his endeavour into androids was not always running as smoothly as he had hoped. There had been multiple spanners in the works, such as the lack of funds, lack of significant progress frustrating him, and his parents pushing him to seek alternate career paths.

 

_“You’re so smart. Don’t waste that potential on something you can’t accomplish.”_

 

_“You could work for another company. You could get an internship and then maybe they’d hire you.”_

 

Other companies didn’t know what he did. They simply didn’t have his intellect, his knowledge, his  _determination_. He grinned at the thought of tech giants crumbling under the might of him; an eighteen-year-old that had developed something they could only imagine. Their work would pale in comparison to the capabilities of his algorithms. They would know the name of _Elijah Kamski_.

 

“Found you.”

 

He pushed up his glasses as he rewrote the fatal error in his code, the reason Chloe had fallen silent. A problem with the retrieval of data, as he was able to deduct. A relatively simple fix, in fact, he was almost embarrassed that he had made the error in the first place. He thought himself better than that. At least it would be quick, not losing any time he could be working on Chloe’s _“body”_.

 

He had developed prototypes of Chloe’s internals and externals; parts of machinery that he believed would be essential to her productivity and her humanoid appearance. “ _Biocomponents”,_ he’d dubbed them, a true breakthrough in robotics. However, his system was not perfect.

 

He needed something to string it all together; something to synthesise them and cause them to communicate with the Android's central processing, allowing full functionality. That missing piece of the puzzle turned out to be “ _Thirium 310”,_ a chemical substance that allowed for the distribution of energy and electrical information through the machine. With it, an android would be able to function almost indistinguishable from a human. Cobalt blood coursing through their wires as if they were veins, fueling them, keeping them  _alive_.

 

Truly a fluke. At least biocomponents could be attributed to his knowledge of hardware while studying at Colbridge, but he hardly had sufficient experience in chemistry to be pulling off such an invention like “blue blood”. He had been concerned that contact with his skin would kill him originally, something that became evidently false as he spent hours upon hours in Chloe’s circuits with the metallic-scented liquid dripping off his hands. He figured that that would also be a good selling point of his technology; “It won’t kill you, even if you touch it’s very questionable chemicals.”

 

He saved his progress on the subroutine, content in the knowledge that he had fixed the flaw in Chloe’s programming. Wiping the sweat off his brow, he stood back to face the android, perched on the stainless steel table, the overhead lights glinting off her glossed plates. Wires streamed out of her, keeping her connected to his AI servers and monitoring the functionality of her biocomponents. He would have her operating on her own soon, but until he was pleased that she was complete, she remained tethered.

 

“Chloe, on.”

 

At the sound of his command, the biocomponent at her temple, her “external feedback indicator”, flickered on to a pleasant blue, her glittering optical units quickly following and blinking to life. Her head turned gently to face him, her lips moving to form a soft smile as they made eye contact.

 

“Good afternoon, Elijah.”

 

Her voice always took him back when she spoke.

 

She was _perfect_.


End file.
